the guy at the end of SEATTLE speaking about martial arts in lupe's uncle. he confirmed it on reddit

just enjoy the album lol

Dope! That track must be called SEATTLE, because 'going supersonic' is being mentioned in the hook.

Seattle has a reputation for being one of the rainiest cities in America. The truth doesn't quite match up, but it still rains about half the year there.

"I'd keep a secret, but I'm honest
If I ever go and leak it"
"Cross my heart and I hope to (die/live)"
"Molotov Cocktail Goku, bottling up what I go through"

Raining or leaking is a metaphor for crying tears. Lupe has always been very guarded about his personal life and he would rather tell his story in the form of a concept like The Cool, because it might hurt too much to say it directly. He is hurting inside, but even so, he has to persevere with the strength of a basketball team like the Seattle Supersonics or the speed of Super Sonic (yellow like Pac-Man/the cover, I Gotcha callback, inspired by Dragonball) and make it out of Chicago.

There's also Sleepless in Seattle, which isn't a 1:1 comparison, but the premise works broadly. The movie is about a widowed architect from Chicago who lost his wife to cancer (like Lupe has lost loved ones to gun violence) and starts a new life in Seattle, while going through the grieving process. Not sure, but I think Lupe moved to California ("Jordan made me Bull, but Kobe made me a Laker"), so they're both on the west coast I guess.

I will be on a computer Sunday ( at parents lol )

Pac-Man Never Ceases To Amaze in DMIZ Pt. 1

During the Ebro in the Morning interview, Lupe said one of the album cover’s meanings is Pac-Man and there is a metanarrative involved. I was initially unsure if he was trolling due to the vibe of that whole interview, that is until I learned he already mentioned Pac-Man in relation to Tetsuo & Youth back in January 2021. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there to know if he went deeper than just highlighting how he adopted the naming conventions of the Pac-Man family for his Mural trilogy. Anyway, I figured it would be worth a shot to see where this rabbit hole goes.

The triangle-shaped drill severs the face of Pac-Man in extreme close-up, splitting his skull in two and signifying DMIZ/demise. The yellow part also forms the shape of an M, similar to the one found in the Pac-Man logo. It could stand for the Music in Drill Music or Ms. Mural as the centerpiece of the album. Alternatively, Pac-Man opens his mouth to consume the drill, digging from within to find Zion and transforming the drill into a feathered headdress or war bonnet (the original intent of the painting). Wearing the strength of a warrior and reaching spiritual enlightenment, it’s uplifting. No longer do I see the triangle’s brush strokes drilling down, but instead, eagle feathers soaring above. However, the two halves of the skull remain, so I’m torn between entrapment and escape.

Looking at the The Cool’s cover and ignoring the various circles, the foundation for it is a triangle pointing up, uniting Michael Young History, The Game and The Streets. Drill Music in Zion’s cover flips the triangle, pointing down. Michael Young History remains in the middle, perpetuating the drill of negativity. The two halves of the skull could refer to the division of “Streets got my heart, Game got my soul”. Maybe there are three triangles to represent a trinity. So, why revisit The Cool now? Even back then, Lupe included religious undertones in his work and it’s implied that the holy trinity of The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit is at odds with the unholy trinity of The Cool. Since 2015, his music has only leaned more into embracing spirituality as a vehicle for storytelling.

When first talking about the album art in May, Lupe called it something like “a nice finish to a series”. I interpreted this series as the albums with the white border and more precisely, the Mural trilogy gradually growing more personal with each iteration. While we never exactly got The Cool 2, he’s been refining that concept in various ways all along. Tetsuo & Youth fuses the endless cycle of respawning in video games with The Passion of Christ. Drogas Wave treats resurrection in a more positive light by immortalizing those we’ve lost. The last few songs scratch the surface of what he’s doing now, but he was mainly still addressing the ghost of his past in the form of mythology at a distance. Drill Music in Zion flips the triangle upside down to drill inward and point the finger back at Lupe himself. Less how it should be and simply how it is.

Crazy Otto/Autoboto and Ms. Pac-Man/Ms. Mural
“Rights to the logo”
“Less like putting on some make-up, more like severing a face”
“A deceptive game you are killing to play”
“Only game I play is a Malcolm X-Box”
“I don’t believe that nothing’s haunted”
“Surrounded by gang members”
“Misguided by ghosts in the land of the living”
“I done used to write all my ghost flows”
“I ain’t afraid of no ghosts”
“In the middle of the mall/them all”
“Never ceases to amaze”
“If you had to paint the gutter, which color would you choose
Said the patron to the painter, the painter said, the blues”
“You can put Dolce Vita (Sweet Life) Chicken Risotto in my coffin”
“Find breaks, gaps to recline safe”
“Error error error error…”
“The failed revival of a perfectionist when his efforts have just sank”
“I’m mistaking staying for cannot leave”
“But if we are trapped in here, I hope that we go supersonic when we leave”

Pac-Man Never Ceases To Amaze in DMIZ Pt. 2

Like Drill Music in Zion, Pac-Man was originally created in response to negativity. Rather than make another space shooter, Toru Iwatani wanted to take his game design in a direction that did not focus on violence or conflict. The answer was to base the game around eating and Pac-Man gets his namesake from the Japanese onomatopoeia for eating: paku paku taberu. The dots you consume in the blue maze are actually cookies and you also have the chance to eat a piece of fruit twice every round. The goal is to clear all the dots while avoiding the Ghost Gang (dead gang members, ghosts of the past) preying on you from the middle of the maze. If you’re successful, you get to proceed to the next level, rinse and repeat.

Lupe was born in the same month Ms. Pac-Man was released, February 1982. Many are born to play The Game and it seems simple enough. You start with the advantages of being able to turn faster than the ghosts and the side tunnels on the left and right will slow them down as well. There are four power pellets in each corner that temporarily turn the ghosts blue and allow you to safely eat them. Only their eyes will be left, which find their way back to the Ghost Pen in the middle, where they resurrect like The Cool to chase you again. However, each dot you eat will slow you down, causing you to slip and fall behind. On Level 17, the power pellets no longer turn the ghosts blue anymore and they will eventually move faster than you.

On Level 256, the game has a glitch or an error where the right side of the maze becomes filled with a jumbled mess of letters, numbers and symbols. Since the highest value of the internal level counter tops out at 255, there is an overflow resulting in 256 fruit being drawn at one time and here we are. That said, a perfect score is attainable at 3,333,360, but you can’t actually beat The Game. It was never designed for you to win. There is no reward or congratulations waiting for you at the “end”. Once you’ve reached that perfect score, you are no less trapped than when you first started. The jumbled mess on the right side means there aren’t enough dots to eat in order to proceed to the next level, so you’re stuck. All that is left to do is kill yourself by running into one of the ghosts to trigger the game over screen and reset the game.

It’s the same T.R.O.N. (also the same year, 1982) neverending game concept as Tetsuo & Youth, just more specific and grim. The split screen of normalcy and chaos is a great way to describe the hypocrisy of Drill Music in Zion, poetic even. Obviously, Lupe stopped playing The Game and made it out of Chicago. We’ve known that since Food and Liquor. “Give em the game? That’s like giving chocolate to the fat”. The other kids weren’t lucky enough to think outside the box of dots and lines, which is nothing new either. But he used to have more optimistic answers. Tetsuo & Youth showed us there is a way out, you just have to switch your perspective to find it. Drogas Wave brought Jesus back down to earth, but he was doing his best. Drill Music in Zion ends with frustration, defeat and the strange feeling that you might not have the answer anymore.

On another note, Ms. Pac-Man’s development has an interesting history. A few MIT dropouts formed General Computer Corporation, which developed enhancement kits that added onto existing arcade machines to make them more challenging. Atari caught wind of what GCC was doing with Super Missle Attack and a lawsuit happened, presenting yet another layer to “I defend myself in court”. In the settlement, GCC was ordered to obtain permission from the manufacturer or “get signals from the source” of each game they design an enhancement kit for, before marketing the kit. Prior to the lawsuit, GCC was already six weeks into a Pac-Man kit called Crazy Otto. This character had eyes, arms and legs, looking more humanoid than the simplicity of the yellow circle with a missing pizza slice for a mouth.

Midway purchased Crazy Otto and contracted GCC to finalize the game for release, consulting Namco every step of the way. So, like a Porsche Autobot, Crazy Otto transforms into Ms. Pacman to better reflect the franchise. Drill Music in Zion’s tracklist appears to be the same with Autoboto preceding Ms. Mural. The Midway logo needs to be rotated in order to see the similarity with the Z-shaped lightning bolt in LFDMIZ and vertically, adds a third layer to the M-shaped cover.* Eventually, Namco would terminate their licensing agreement with Midway after several more unauthorized sequels. America had quickly seized control of a Japanese franchise with not too much more respect than Mr. Roboto, where Autoboto likely gets its third namesake from. Contrast that with Naomi Osaka, who despite living in America for the majority of her life, identifies more with Japan.

At a cultural crossroads, even the inspiration for the ghosts is split between Little Ghost Q-Taro and Casper the Friendly Ghost. Song structure is similarly fragmented, if not perfectly symmetrical. Everything is transforming from one thing to another, for better or worse. The entire tracklist can be read in multiple ways, which is comforting in the sense that nothing is set in stone. When confronted with the impossible victory of Pac-Man replicated through On Faux Nem, I find solace in the fluidity of language and hope that it can change. Much like the public perception of Joan of Arc. Or how four words become refined, time after time, until the canvas holds something truly precious. As the lead single suggests, each song “can twist and it contorts” into something else by the time you’ve finished playing it. And whatever it is, it’ll just be what it is, you know? We’ll figure it out from there.

*This wouldn’t be the first time Lupe played with letters for the cover. Drogas Wave’s cover also looks like an upside-down A for Atlantic and I’m just now noticing that it’s an artsy revision of the Lasers cover. Whatever Lupe, you win.

in but I never cared for a***yzing Lupes music. its like reading one of those post-modernist DFW Gonzalo Torrente Ballester types just so you could read footnotes three times longer than the piece

That's what makes it a real masterpiece because of how much you can infer. I can go on but yes :)

Where’s that guy from the OG site at he had duck in his username lol he deciphered tf out of T&Y

Also the T&Y thread was a classic

“Sparks for bones”
“Got caught, fought, lost, electrocuted to death”
Throwback to the Trilly & Truly logo. “Lightning gave them life” is the recipe for Frankenstein and by association, The Cool. Also, the opposite of its modern-day counterpart on Drill Music in Zion’s second verse beginning with the electric chair. Lightning gives them death now.

I also think it's a reference to the escape portion of Prisoner 1 & 2

Superstar electric chair too

Lol I passed torch to Brian but I’m doing a relisten . My computer molded while homeless but will be at parents . Appreciate being remembered

in

Of course you made the T&Y drop fun on the OG site

That was y’all too lol I was just crazy enough to question it all but waves and this harder to me . That was my senior year of college and just what I needed

I’ve seen others point out that the album cover is an upside-down mountain, but I think it could be specifically, Mount Zion. Right side up, the triangle pointing down is drilling for gold, monetizing the rappers who die too much and our other fallen soldiers. The skull is severed into two and they have no choice but to simply fall to their death. However, if the triangle pointing up is Mount Zion, the yellow portion changes into a lightning-filled sky. Like the Trilly & Truly slogan, “Lightning gave them life”. The two halves of the severed skull are now climbing Mount Zion to piece themselves back together at the summit, because lightning tends to strikes the tallest point. Maybe this is what Lupe really meant by “a nice finish to a series”. Tetsuo & Youth has an upside-down cross, Drogas Wave has an upside-down A and Drill Music in Zion has an upside-down mountain. Instead of resigning to your fate, it’s a series of taking control of your life, which you can only see from another angle.

“Those trusting in the Lord are like Mount Zion, unshakable, forever enduring” - Psalm 125:1

“Left, left, right, left
To figure it out”
“Learn how to grow your own food and don’t get caught starin’
Down the barrel of a gun”
If you go back to Ayesha’s older intros, she was always good at giving you vivid imagery to set the scene, but didn’t really attempt wordplay. Not a bad thing as she still poetically conveyed this intersection of good and evil, just a different approach. Then, she started incorporating wordplay on F&L2 and the amount on the Lion’s Deen is so plentiful in comparison. She also does this thing where the last word finishes one bar, while also being the start of the next bar. “Left, left, right, left” is an army marching cadence and Lupe’s uncle on Seattle says, “Like the army says, be the best that you can be”.

“That will define how lions in Zion became alley cats
Who traded their baseball bats for gats that spat
Blood of the people across steeples”
Zion is Jerusalem, the capital of the Kingdom of Judah. Jesus is known as the Lion of Judah. Alleycats are promiscuous women or anyone with loose morals. Putting that together, the holy became unholy, similar to blood-stained church steeples. The steeple is a tall tower above the church building, including a pointy spire at the top. The shape brings to mind the summit of Mount Zion, which you can see if you flip the album cover upside down.

Could be referencing the Tri-City Valley Cats baseball team, setting up the modern-day holy trinity several lines later.

Guns spit bullets and the baseball spitting tradition goes back to the 1800s. Players chewed tobacco to build saliva, and used that spit to keep their gloves moist on dusty fields.

“Manifest the new world that Columbus thought he found”
Christopher Columbus’ flagship was the Santa Maria and his history of rape, murder, slavery, etc. soils the holy name of Saint Mary. Like Columbus Day was returned to its rightful owners with Indigenous People’s Day, so too can holiness be reclaimed.

“Band together to reverse the weather to unite the seeds of the oppressed”
The rain motif on the last 2 songs, conveys sadness, but the meaning of rain can be reversed to literally help seeds grow.

“Funeral processionals increase their frequency”
“Wanna be the block, but can’t buy the block, bulldozing the block
Makin’ the Red Sea choke on bones of drones”
“Learn how to run underground drills in Zion”
“Pull the weeds from your mind
Look to the front, the side and behind
You each have blades that will drill a new earth”
Blades refers to blades of grass, but combined with running, I think of Blade Runner (1982 again, pick another year, Lupe). Blade Runner references the cancelled Roy album, which was supposed to center around the movie character of the same name. I know the album title actually stems from The Matrix, but the Wachowskis cited Blade Runner as an inspiration. Both draw from biblical imagery to explore technology’s effect on humanity. The Blade Runner movie is a loose adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This title alone unifies the theme of AI/transhumanism with the electric symbol in the LFDMIZ logo. The answer to whether Rick Deckard is human or replicant (android) remains ambiguous and while the album doesn’t dwell too much on robots in disguise or human bulldozers, it does focus on the blurred lines in our obsession with devices like Android phones. Roy Batty’s “Tears in Rain” speech echoes the sad side of Seattle.

“I get my signals from The Source
I can Twist and I contort”
Far from tongue twisting, but Autoboto is the most upbeat song on the album. The 100 Chicagos video has similar shades, watch and pinky ring to Twista’s in The Source. The Source was The Bible of Hip-Hop and The Matrix get its signals from the real bible. In The Matrix, The Source is also believed to be the central computing core for the entire machine mainframe. The Oracle gave Neo a signal before he knocked over the vase. Twisting/contorting like Transformers and also, “It is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself”. Zion is in you.

“I just feel like I’m a Porsche
I’m Carrera, error, error, error, error…”
“You lose all of the plots for the affections of a race”
Race as in racism, but carrera can mean “race” in Spanish. When you aim to get rich or die trying asap, you’re bound to forget where you came from. You can only live the fast life for so long and Ghoti has an implied bar of "ball til you fall".

“Rights to the logo”
The drill shape on the album cover resembles the Decepticons logo. If simplified, it’s a pentagon (containing a triangle) pointing down and there are two extra triangles on the bottom left/right to complete the implied rectangle. Alternatively, black and yellow is the color scheme of Bumblebee, an Autobot. The middle triangle now represents the stinger of a real bumblebee. Remember, there is more than 1 type of drilling. You can drill to destroy (Decepticons) others or drill to create (Autobots) Zion within you.

Decepticons or deceptiveness is a useful lens for exploring how the true intent often hides inside something else, as well as hinting at the sneakily interwoven narratives:
1. Live life according to The Lion’s Deen and Drill Music doesn’t have to be destructive, Zion is in you
2. Ghoti=Fish, mistaking nightmares for dreams, the devil’s deceit in the Garden of Eden
3. No audible jazz on Autoboto, but the Porsche Autobot is named Jazz and informs the upcoming jazzy instrumentation from Ms. Mural to DMIZ, Mr. Roboto is a human disguised as a robot
4. Flips the phrase “to know something like the back of your hand”, betrayed by Precious Things you thought you could always trust
5. The Kiosk worker’s verses are full of manipulative lies
6. Ms. Mural=Joan of Arc
7. Naomi’s focus shifts to Malcolm X
8. DMIZ provides passive and active approaches to death, only to reveal neither is the answer
9. Potentially, Seattle=Roy Batty, Tears in Rain, fear under bravado, “bottling up what I go through”
10. On Faux Nem wishes you were lying/deceiving me, hiding the full weight of pain in 4 words and gradually making it clearer with each subsequent verse

KIOSK gives me State Run Radio vibes………………..

the overarching theme is CONTRADICTION and DUALITY imo. first example of this is the album title itself.

10. ON FAUX NEM
Lupe turned on foe nem (which is a gang term turned into general slang to mean "on god" "on my momma") into the opposite meaning something "not genuine". instead of telling rappers to keep it authentic or real, like most people in hip-hop, he tells rappers to lie. he wishes the raps about killing opps were not true. he also points out his own contradiction of speaking out against violence in his city, while being associated with gang members and having a history in the streets (free chilly).

9. Seattle
Lupe tells us he kept his promise to the streets of building himself into a positive role model and making a positive change in the world. he is a positive rapper, MIT professor and Philanthropist with multiple non profits. This might be the opposite of what you think a gangster might tell someone to become, but he's mentioned this sentiment before.
"Where You Think Im From, Im From The Streets Nigga
Triple OG's told me to teach nigga"

8. Drill Music In Zion
Lupe talks about global warming, ai technology, and the american justice system. We as humans use the earth as a home (our zion) yet we are killing it. In the second verse he talks about DNA exonerating someone who was killed on death row. Even though his reputation is cleared, he was still killed by the state. The real killer is also out in the world enjoying his life, prolly calling the cops on lupe (for playing his music loudly). these contradictions and episodes of the soul keep his heart cold.

7. Naomi
Lupe has mentioned this song being a song to champion Naomi to keep going and to not let the media discourage her. Her being outspoken will make her a bigger target for ridicule, but even jesus took a knife for the team (the people). People who fight for the right thing (Malcolm X) will become bigger targets but they have no option but to swing back and fulfill their purpose.

6. Ms. Mural
I interpreted this song as the struggle between art and commercialism. The only thing an artist needs to do is to create and express themselves through their medium, but to survive in this world they have to make a living off their art. In this process, they have to make some compromises to their art. quite a conundrum. in the end, lupe burns his art as well as the patron because he thinks his art is not sufficient enough, but how can his creative expression not be good enough.

will finish later. but was listening to the album late at night and wanted to outline one of the many overarching themes that runs across the whole album.

Y’all going in